It’s true there are different ‘zones’ of the Episcopal church for a long time though:
I was involved for a short time in the early /mid 1990s introduced by a friend who grew up Episcopalian. He introduced me to the boy’s choirs and the pipe organs; we went to cathedrals in NYC and NJ and some great concerts.
And at the time, there was most definitely TWO Episcopal churches in the USA:
You had the more conservative wing, which was dominant and then you had Bishop Spong.
Now I’m from one square mile town called Roselle Park NJ, which is next to Elizabeth, New Jersey which is next to Newark, New Jersey.
Bishop Spong’s diocese was: Newark, New Jersey.
as a snippet says:
“Spong was the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark from 1979 to 2000. He was known as a leader of the church’s liberal wing. He was one of the first American bishops to ordain a woman into the clergy (in 1977), and he was the first to ordain an openly gay man (Robert Williams in 1989).”
So, in most of the places my friend Tim and I went to, they were very liberal. Pro gay marriage, pro women ordination, etc.
But occasionally we’d visit one of the more conservative parishes and despite also being “high church”, there was a slightly different vibe to them.
So at the time, there were two in parallel. I just happened to be in the area with the controversial Bishop.
I don’t know what happened after 2000 though.
But looking at the timeline, it seems that gay marriage was approved in the Episcopal church in 2015, likely after a few decades of debate.
At the time I was visiting, Bishop Spong was still an outlier. AIDS was still around, women clergy were controversial, etc.
But it seems like the politics were shifting within the church away from the conservative side and more towards the liberal side during all that time, likely coinciding with shifting societal attitudes.